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BUILDING SUSTAINABLE, INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES: How America can pursue smart growth and reunite our metropolitan communities By David Rusk Published by About the Author David Rusk is president of the Metropolitan Area Research Corporation (MARC), a founding member of Building One America. As an urban policy consultant, he has consulted in over 120 metropolitan areas in the USA as well as in Canada, England, Germany, South Africa, and The Netherlands where he was a visit- ing professor of urban planning at the University of Amsterdam in 2000-01. He is author of Cities without Suburbs (3rd edition: 2003), Baltimore Unbound (1995), Inside Game/Outside Game (1999) and Creating a Greater Wheeling: a Citizen’s Guide to City-County Unification (2007). The views expressed in this report are solely those of the author’s; and although the commentaries are based on a set of recommendations adopted by Building One America (see Appendix A), the members of the Building One America network have not specifically approved each of the commentaries and analyses contained in this report. Photo Credits: Andy Cook (cover large photo, p.10), David Rusk (pp. 22,27,30), Barbara Samuels (cover small pho- tos). Layout/Design: mary pettigrew, ampersand graphic design. BUILDING SUSTAINABLE, INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES: How America can pursue smart growth and reunite our metropolitan communities By David Rusk May 2010 Published by “. you can't have a truly sustainable community if you promote segregated development patterns and concentrated poverty.” –HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan at the 9th Annual “New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities” Conference, Feb. 4, 2010 (prepared remarks) Preface On June 16, 2009, in joint testimony to Congress by three Cabinet Secretaries, the Obama Administration announced an innovative new interagency collaboration among the Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The initiative, called the “Partnership for Sustainable Communities” was an effort to “coordinate federal transportation, environmental protection, and housing investments” around principles of smart growth. The Partnership for Sustainable Communities established six livability principles that were embodied in an agency partnership agreement.1 The interagency Partnership Agreement was soon followed by the appropriation of $150 million to HUD for the first phase of a new “Sustainable Communities Initiative,” a competitive planning grant program intended to merge housing and transportation planning, and the introduction of a major bill in the Senate, S.B. 1619, known as the “Livable Communities Act,” which would com- mit up to $1.75 billion by FY2013 to link housing and transportation planning and development efforts. In its proposed 2011 Budget, HUD requested $150 million for a second phase of the Sustainable Communities Initiative, and HUD also requested input on the contents of its initial competitive funding announcement for the program. This report originated in comments prepared by David Rusk and submitted to HUD by our organizations and coalition partners on the proposed first phase of the Sustainable Communities Initiative,2 but the principles apply equally to the future direction of the Senate’s Livable Communities Act, the next phase of the Sustainable Communities Initiative, and ultimately, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act. As Rusk explains in detail in the chapters that follow, without a strong vision of social inclusion, it will be difficult to maintain a sustainable development future for our metropolitan areas. Philip Tegeler, Poverty & Race Research Action Council 1 The Partnership principles included: 1. Provide more transportation choices - Develop safe, reliable and eco- nomical transportation choices to decrease household transportation costs, reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote public health; 2. Promote equitable, affordable housing - Expand location- and energy-efficient housing choices for people of all ages, incomes, races and ethnicities to increase mobility and lower the combined cost of housing and transporta- tion; 3. Enhance economic competitiveness - Improve economic competitiveness through reliable and timely access to employment centers, educational opportunities, services and other basic needs by workers as well as expanded business access to markets; 4. Support existing communities - Target federal funding toward exist- ing communities – through such strategies as transit-oriented, mixed-use development and land recycling – to increase community revitalization, improve the efficiency of public works investments, and safeguard rural landscapes; 5. Coordinate policies and leverage investment - Align federal policies and funding to remove bar- riers to collaboration, leverage funding and increase the accountability and effectiveness of all levels of govern- ment to plan for future growth, including making smart energy choices such as locally generated renewable energy; 6. Value communities and neighborhoods - Enhance the unique characteristics of all communities by investing in healthy, safe and walkable neighborhoods – rural, urban or suburban. 2 The ten chapters that make up this report were prepared by David Rusk, president of the Metropolitan Area Research Corporation, one of the founding organizations of Building One America. Unlike the official letter of recommendations transmitted to HUD and signed by 24 members of Building One America and its allies (see Appendix A), these commentaries were not reviewed and formally adopted by the Building One America Policy Committee. However, they fairly convey the policy positions of Building One America and add a depth of analysis that aids their implementation. Building Sustainable, Inclusive Communities 1 Introduction: Ten Principles for Building Sustainable, Inclusive Communities HUD’s new “Sustainable Communities Initiative” (SCI) represents the best of the new adminis- tration – looking forward creatively towards a new metropolitan future, and crossing bureaucratic silos to engage transportation policy, environmental policy, and housing policy in the same pro- gram. However, the SCI program also demonstrates the potential pitfalls of trying to move pro- gressive policies without engaging the real continuing divisions of race and class in our society. We believe that the SCI program has the potential to advance the goal of racially and economically integrated and environmentally sustainable regions. However, to achieve this goal, the program needs to take these issues on explicitly. We are encouraged by recent comments made by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, DOT Secretary Ray LaHood, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who all stated, in effect, that “sus- tainable must be equitable” at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference on February 2010. That commitment was memorably reinforced by HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims in his inspiring remarks to conclude the conference. HUD and its partners, DOT and EPA, have been provided with very broad latitude in designing the SCI planning grant program through the very general explanatory language of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of December 16, 2009; thus, in terms of developing national models for achieving both greater social justice and enhanced environmental sustainability, HUD- DOT-EPA must set the bar very high for the pilot planning grant program – and must take into account their mutual obligation to affirmatively further fair housing in any federal program affect- ing housing and urban development. Our recommendations, focusing on regional opportunity goals, are set out below, and will be elaborated on in subsequent chapters. These recommendations were also submitted to HUD by Building One America and its coalition partners: 1. Sustainable Communities planning must be genuinely regional in scope, covering the jurisdic- tions that comprise a metropolitan or micropolitan area, or, at least those jurisdictions forming the urbanized area of such, including the principal city or cities and first suburbs. 2. The recipient of an SCI planning grant must be a governmental unit (such as a county for single-county regions), or consortium of governmental units (such as a Metropolitan Planning Organization or Council of Governments) or, in the absence of interested local governments, a state agency – in short, public bodies that control development policy (land use, commercial and industrial development, housing, transportation and other infrastructure, etc.) within a region. 3. There must be proportional representation on a Sustainable Communities grant recipient’s governing body of the residents of principal cities and first suburbs (where minorities and low- income households are typically concentrated); or, failing that test, an SCI grant recipient must establish a decision-making substructure that achieves proportional representation. 2 POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL 4. Sustainable Communities Grants must include a plan for meaningful citizen involvement in the planning process, including the involvement of regional opportunity advocacy organizations. 5. A primary goal of Sustainable Communities planning must be the reduction of racial and economic residential segregation and school segregation and concentrations of poverty on a regional basis with aggressively affirmatively furthering fair housing as a fundamental policy; a method